Whitehall’s spending watchdog said the technical problems with the Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) programme were discovered in September 2022 and meant that 35 convicted offenders and defendants had not been fitted with tags, among other errors.
Officials found the multi-million pound digital case management system for courts – known as 'Common Platform' – had failed to send more than 3,000 “important notifications” to other bodies between June 2021 and August 2022, accounting for about 1 per cent of the total.
This happened as the “system could not cope with the volume of notifications”, a National Audit Office (NAO) report, published today (Thursday 23 February), has revealed.
Investigations found 367 of the faults could have “affected justice outcomes” and that “criminal justice processes were disrupted in 23 per cent of these cases”.
The report added that “35 people were not fitted with electronic monitoring tags when they should have...